Sacrificing Body for Bike

We all love our bikes, we put time and money into them, we spend hours upon them. When we crash, one of the first things we think about is the bike, in fact I take that as a sign that the rider is ok.

But everyonce and a while you have to make a desicion, or maybe its unknowingly done, that puts your body into harms way in order to save our precious bikes from harm.

Case in point, I recently was taking my friends bike out of the trunk of the car, as I lifted it into the air by the seatpost, the release gave way and the frame dropped towards the ground. Without thinking I grabbed at the bottom of the bike and saved it from hitting concrete. However, I now have puncture marks in my palm from the chainring.

You see what I'm getting at, I just wanted to throw this out there and see what other stories some may have.

I've gone down in a corner on the road, lost adhesion completely because of my entry speed into the corner, and had the choice of holding onto the bike and taking the damage to my body, or throwing it away and rolling to minimise the damage to me.

I take all the damage.... every time..

Strange, isn't it..

I guess its because .................................................. ........ I love "her".

No, I think it's something we do unconciously. When we fall and hurt ourselves rather than the bike, we aren't thinking and analyising, well, if I fall this way, I won't hurt myself but the bike will suffer, but if I do it this way, the bike will be broken, but, well, maybe I can compromise and.... I don't think on most crashes we really think what we are doing, we just... fall.

Sometimes we crash because a split second decision to stop a potential fall. I was on this rock garden in a downhill, I saw a bigger rock in my path, I panicked and tried to turn left, but that just made me hit the rock with the side of the wheel, bending my wheel. If I just would have hold on, I think I would have been OK.

One of his buddies took a large 10 foot road gap and cased the landing hard. He rolled, tumbled and ended up laying motionless in a heap on the ground. By the time they all ran over to him, he stood up and with glazed over eyes said, "How's the bike?" and promptly fell back to the ground. I guess he was out for 10 minutes and doesn't remember a thing.